Music Reviews

In the heart of the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, just under the Market Street Elevated (‘the el’ as the locals call it), is a mural of text and visual interpretations of songs from a native’s album. That mural alone cements Kurt Vile's place within the city’s culture. Originally from the borough of Lansdowne, Kurt’s career progressed from creating low-fidelity bedroom recordings to the slickest-sounding nuggets from his home studio. Vile’s twist on... Read More

With superstar pianist Yuja Wang on top form, and conductor Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra completing their Shostakovich cycle (available on CD individually or in a box), this vinyl release of the composer’s exciting, very accessible piano concertos rivals the best of the Original Source Series in its vivid sonics.  Proving that digital can be done right, is this a new Audiophile Classic?

Few music-related fair use debacles quite measure up to the “Frippocalypse” – a years-long period in which Robert Fripp’s team copyright-struck every King Crimson album review, meme, anything, posted to YouTube. I felt like I was walking on eggshells every time I reviewed a King Crimson album.Some of my peers flew closer to the sun; losing entire YouTube channels over posting excerpts from the Brondesbury Tapes.In the context of The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles... Read More

Mary Halvorson is the jazz guitarist of the moment. The just-published Downbeat Critics’ Poll ranks her as #1 Guitarist of the Year, her Amaryllis Sextet as #1 Group of the Year, and Halvorson herself as #2 Artist of the Year (outflanked just barely by tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis).As if to sharpen the point, her new album—About Ghosts, her 14th as a leader since emerging as a wildly adventurous 27-year-old in 2008, her 4th release on the Nonesuch label... Read More

I think I was 18 or 19 years old the first time I heard Title Fight play. I remember standing in the hot summer Texas sun at the Mohawk on Red River street waiting for Converge to play, and all of a sudden this group of unassuming kids in loose-fit denim from Kingston, PA took the stage. They were followed quickly by a cohort of 20 or so teenagers that took over the crowd with the kind of energy that made damn sure everyone knew that we were watching the greatest punk... Read More

Compilations tend to carry a certain stigma: contractual obligations, a stopgap between releases, executed without consent, or labels ringing every last dollar from a catalog. Some are subject to scrutiny regarding imbalanced tracklists and why certain songs were included or excluded. Regardless of intent, it provides curious fans with an ‘all-in-one’ primer, or sways the diehards with a dull obligation because of one exclusive track. Beyond the generalized view where... Read More

The Late Show is dead. Long live The Late Show. Last week, CBS announced that its flagship late-night show — launched by David Letterman in 1993 after his departure from NBC’s Late Night, and hosted by Stephen Colbert since 2015 — will end by May of next year. Not just Colbert’s version, which was never quite my bag, but the whole damn thing. Officially, it’s a cost-cutting move, but plenty see political pressure behind it. For me, it’s mostly a marker of time.As a... Read More

Readers of this website might look to me as an authority on classical recordings, but one thing that continuously humbles me is just how vast and rich the history of this field is. This is especially true for the middle of the 20th century, where there are untold riches of performance and sound. By now, hopefully readers here are familiar with names like Kenneth Wilkinson, Lewis Layton and Robert Fine, but learning the history of recorded classical music is to... Read More

The Surrounding Green is Fred Hersch’s first piano-trio album in seven years—a fact that surprised me when I looked it up, since, in Hersch’s 40-year recording career, nearly half of his albums up until then were trio dates, befitting of his classic-jazz style and repertoire. The six albums between 2017’s Live in Europe (with bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson) and his latest (with Drew Gress and Joey Baron) have been an eclectic bunch—solos, duets, a... Read More

Of all the groups from the Detroit music scene in the early 2000s, The White Stripes were a group shrouded in enigma. Jack and Meg White played into their mythology, portraying themselves as siblings to distance their reality as ex-spouses in a child-like uniform of red, white, and black regalia. Working within strict limitations couldn’t contain the duo’s explosive sound, which embodied the brash garage rock influence from the Motor City, yet was soaked in bluesy... Read More

Charles Lloyd is still out there making vital music at 87 but consider alto saxophonist Marshall Allen! He recently turned 101. The Sun Ra Arkestra leader since 1995 founded Marshall Allen's Ghost Horizon ensemble in 2022 featuring Arkestra guitarist DMHOTEP along with an ever changing roster of guest musicians from the worlds of jazz and rock including Immanuel Wilkins, The War on Drugs' drummer Charlie Hall, "divine" saxophonist James Brandon... Read More

To peer through the lens of one of Elliott Smith’s key influences for a moment: everyone knows when an artist has made their Rubber Soul, White Album, or Let It Be. Rubber Souls are transitional — exotic, quixotic dispatches from early creative growth spurts. White Albums are post-genre, post-everything info dumps — essentially kits that dare you to build your own record. As for a band’s eventual demise, Let It Bes show the writing on the wall. And then there’s Sgt.... Read More

This riveting psychodrama in music remains one of Mahler’s most compelling and challenging creations, demanding the ultimate from performers and engineers alike. Joining the ranks of two previous Mahler outings from the Original Source (Karajan’s traversals of Symphonies 5 and 6), how does Abbado’s “Resurrection” fare?

Canadian saxophonist Cory Weeds first came to my attention as the reissue producer of a remarkable Charles Tolliver Music Inc double LP, Live at the Captain's Cabin (Reel to Real RTRLP 014) a limited to 500 edition released for last Fall's Record Store Day "Black Friday".Cohearent Audio's Kevin Gray had mastered several Reel to Real releases for Weeds (but for an "s" that could sound transactional) but until his granddaughter Amber... Read More

Definitely watch the Yacht Rock doc on HBO Max even if just the concept of the non-existent genre makes you seasick. It's a fun watch and it ties together the musicians who played in so many studio bands cobbled together to make smooth-rock. Plus Toto. The doc producer cast a wide net. Steely Dan got caught up in it not because of the music, but because Fagen and Becker recruited so many of these nimble-fingered (and voiced) studio cats to play on their... Read More

Within a musical climate dominated by disco on the charts and airwaves, Foreigner became the poster boys of ‘corporate rock’ in the mid-1970s. A varied career of session work led guitarist Mick Jones to create an entity that reflected his musical vision of commercially viable headknocking rock. The cross-nationality of the group’s American (Lou Gramm, Ed Gagliardi, Al Greenwood) and British (Mick Jones, Dennis Elliott, Ian McDonald) members cleverly lent itself to the... Read More

Nature, ecology and jazz have been getting together lately. Last year there was Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myer's Central Park's Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens and this year, David Murray Quartet's Birdly Serenade and now Chris Cheek's leisurely jazz paddle down a deceptively lazy river with the scene set by a vintage, iconic Edward S. Curtis print on the jacket front and a desert trek Curtis photo on the rear. What does it... Read More